| Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| friend, if you've never broken into a dead shopping mall, its a GAS. they exist. http://deadmalls.com/features.html | |
| Front 242 – Sacrifice Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| if that's not good songwriting, nothing is. you did good JLDM! | |
| Arcade Fire – Deep Blue Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| My expectation is that 'prayer to a dying star' isn't a specific reference, but rather more of an evocation of an emotion of the moment... even though it is twinned with 'a dead star collapsing' later in the song. Sheesh, now i'm wondering if some celebrity died and prompted this thought. ha! | |
| Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Really like the analysis of Supertramp above; I'm a neophyte urban planner, I do think that Regine's singing about physical places as well as the system that has created them. Love the mirrored lines of "come and find your kind" and "we don't need your kind". I suppose there's some real passage of time between the two, especially if it's as autobiographical as to be about "Regine and Win vs. the World" ... Regine's being playful with 'on the surface', i think there's the double meaning in the first verse that we are misunderstanding the 'surface message' we get from the 'city lights' In our youth, we think that 'the city', in all the possibilities it represents, wants us to 'find our kind.' We expect that 'our kind' are out there, to be found. And if we're lucky, we do. But once we find someone to kiss under the swings in the park, the city lights still shine. The great expanse of noisy, crowded, living people is a threat to the bliss shared by lovers, the people who actually find it. And she realizes that we find our loves in spite of the city, not because of it. thus: 'i need some darkness, someone please cut the lights.' |
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| Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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no kidding re: the sequencing. it's totally marvelous, and joyous in the face of some really depressing material to put the uplifting music at the end. (and then the hammer of the coda to The Suburbs, that they would love to grow up in the same way, again and again...) |
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| Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| ok, that's a pretty dizzying feeling to realize that there are lots of younger folks (and even some Arcade Fire fans) who wouldn't have any reason to know the expression "punch the clock". Ow! | |
| Arcade Fire – Sprawl I (Flatland) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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yeah, a wonderful and obviously autobiographical song, I can't add too much to your thorough commentary except to say that you're spot on. I would have to speculate that the companion in the song is Brother Will... but: *puts on urban planner hat* the 'towns they built to change' is a pretty powerful and curious way of describing an urban form. I do think that suburbs cannot really change in a meaningful way, they can only erase memories, meaning, identity, in a way that healthy places cannot. The blank repetition of houses, streets etc have no permanent identity except to their inhabitants. this is why he feels so estranged from the place, even though it is the same physical houses, the Suburbs retain no character of his childhood memories. |
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| Arcade Fire – Ready to Start Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I have to agree that it's absolutely NOT about a break-up. I see this as much more about the creative process of trying to write a new album, to move the band forward in some new direction. "would rather be wrong / than live in the shadows of your song" is about pushing the music in a new direction, rather than rehashing the (admittedly fantastic) material / themes / sounds on Funeral and Neon Bible. The stuff about the door, "please come out with us tonight" etc, is clearly biographical, ie this song is about "The Band". Maybe Win's trying to overcome writer's block, or just to begin the whole tortured process of birthing a whole new album, etc. Everyone else is ready, is he? Mostly this comes down to: who is he addressing? "You say, can we still be friends?" "If i was yours, but I'm not" "you're knocking at my door" "live in the shadows of your song" "you're not sure / you opened the door / and step out into the dark / now I'm ready" For me, the last lines are key, because of the shift in perspective from 'you' to 'i'. My own interpretation is that he's writing the song to, and addressing, well, himself, mostly. Telling himself he can't just be friends with the Arcade Fire that made the previous albums, tread the same ground. That he, as a writer, isn't just the sum of his old material. That he will come out of his isolation into new ground, etc. The more thought I give the song, the more i like it, at any rate. |
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| Arcade Fire – Month of May Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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well as a neophyte urban planner, I love the core truth (and it is the truth!) that the reason we have such crappy living spaces, where we do not connect in meaningful ways, is that we built the roads before the towns. I particularly love how the angry 'around and around and around' foreshadows the wistful sigh of 'waste it again and again' in the coda of the album. I agree that the song is about the difficulty of inspiring anyone to anything, even the hipster fans who you have clearly reached, but still not budged from their 'arms folded tight' defensiveness. Clearly tied to 'Rococo' in this regard, and I love that every song on the album plugs into multiple other songs somehow. And there's definitely an addressing of the creative process (re: "start a record" etc). It's pretty likely that there was a pretty stellar storm in Montreal in May 2009, haha! Wish a local would comment! |
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| Arcade Fire – Deep Blue Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I feel that the whole track is pretty directly about Win's always-uneasy relationship with technology. Consider it directly paired with the following 'We Used to Wait', which moves in the same waters. Obviously with the Deep Blue reference (and it's the song's title!), it's about a vertiginous, empty-stomached feeling of obsolescence. I figure the song is referring an actual older song, though i don't know what it might be... "barely a child when i heard" ... "prayer to a dying star", but it's a meaningful song; he sings it as well, but it's "the lie". That lie might be, say, some feel-good isn't-humanity-grand message, if he is now repudiating it at the turn of the century... It's the machines mediating everything (the speakers of the passing car, the tiny screen, Deep Blue, cellphones, laptops, and Win just wanting to be outside feeling the chill of the night. Amazing. p.s. it's shorthand to attribute Win as the writer of everything, when I doubt that's the case, but there you go. Good Job Band! |
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| Arcade Fire – The Suburbs (Continued) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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what a fantastic conclusion to an album built around twinned thoughts, repeated themes and sentiments. Win's repeating of 'again and again...' really does perfectly describe the nature of the whole album. It's surely addressed to Regine (and vice versa) the 'I would love to waste it again' etc. part, because, hey, even if he's cursed with the awareness, and all these thoughts of the monstrous Suburbs, well, didn't a lot of good still come of it? (that he loved wasting it the first time round?) I don't see how "well I've got to ask" fits in, though. |
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